Hammerfest; Monday, 14 January, 2008

I awoke to two startling facts. One that I was apparently, the only person staying in the hotel as there was nobody around at Breakfast except one member of staff who looked more bored that I think I have ever seen before and was overly enthusiastic to help with anything I wanted, a sure sign that the tedium levels had peaked! Secondly the concept of a day without light is not technically as bleak and dark as it sounds. There was quite a bit of light, think the kind on twilight that you get at 10ish on a really clear summers night around mid-summer, no sun in the sky but enough light to be able to make out colours and mountains in the middle distance.

After my slightly bizarre breakfast I checked out (once again encountering a member of staff who was obviously not particularly rushed off their feet this morning) I wandered down into the centre of town to visit the Royal Polar Bear Society museum. When I got there I discovered that they had recently moved, back almost to where the hotel was!

After looking around the hotel I popped by the post office to get some postcards and stamps and sent those off before wandering up to the city’s other museum. Having taken in virtually all the sights of the city (there is a ruin of an old fortress and a monument to the first attempt to accurately map the size of the globe, which ended in Hammerfest in the 1850’s, but these are on a spit of land right round the other side of the harbour, and having walked from there the previous day on the way down from the airport I knew it would be the best part of an hours round trip for no real purpose.

By now the Hurtigruten had just docked so I walked back to the hotel, picked up my bags and broke my third record of the trip (first being the longest baggage tag I have ever had on a bag with three airport codes, the second being the furthest North I have ever been), the shortest distance ever between hotels, all of 100 meters.

Having checked in and dumped my stuff in my cabin, I had a wander around the ship, before settling into what I felt was the ship lifestyle, lots of reading of books, eating of food and drinking of beverages (not all alcohol!).

About 3 and a half hours after leaving Hammerfest we pulled into Oxford. I thought that it was a little quick to have got from the top of Norway to the Home Counties, especially as Oxford is so far up the Thames as to not be navigable to. It turned out that it was Øksfjord. A short stop, punctuated by some frantic Norwegian shouts as they closed up the hold before a waiting passenger could load their van on, a couple of minutes later, and with the van safely stowed on the car deck we pulled back out and continued on. The first part of the journey had at times been a little bumpy. I had already checked and found out that on leaving Hammerfest the boat has to travel in open waters for a while before it can go down into the fjords. With that now behind us we settled into the calm waters of the fjords and continued south, and then, about an hour later, what I had been waiting for happened, off the Starboard side of the ship the Aurora had come out to play. The lightshow was stunning, with green clouds swirling overhead (sadly the light wasn’t strong enough for my camera to pick up so I didn’t manage to get any photos). The show ended after about 30 minutes so freezing, but happy, I returned to my cabin to warm up and to continue the journey to somewhere I was certain I’d heard of before…

Skjervøy was where I had first encountered the Hurtigruten when I went on a coach and boat tour from Tromsø the previous summer. Given that I had already seen the port I wasn’t too upset to miss it as dinner was called shortly before we were due to dock. Doubly happy given how delicious the dinner (and the second helpings of dinner!) were. Leaving Skjervøy we travelled for another hour or so before crossing past the northbound Hurtigruten (in this instance the MS Trollfjord). I had popped out on deck to see this anyway and was amazed that at pretty much the same time there was an even more dramatic and spectacular display of the Northern Lights. This time it included reds, oranges and purples and really danced around the sky. There was even a band in the distance which for a while I thought was just the glow from a big city until I realised that the nearest cities that could create that kind of glow would have been London or Stockholm, and I was in the middle of Fjord hundreds of miles from the nearest big town.

When I had last been on the Hurtigruten (makes it sound like I use it on a near weekly basis!) I had disembarked at Tromsø to go back to my hotel. It had been gone midnight and it was during a period at which I was getting no sleep (and slowly going a bit nuts). However, the lure of my warm cabin and soft bed meant that I didn’t see Tromsø again, instead I went to bed about an hour before we were due to dock.

Weather

Clear (Polar Winter) Clear (Polar Winter)
AM PM
Cold (-10-0C, 14-32F)
-6ºC/21ºF